The art of crafting the perfect beer is being shared with the world thanks to a new initiative at Olds College.
This year, students in the Brewmaster program have been asked to document their class experience by writing blogs and posting to social media. They are Tweeting, shooting photos and videos and networking with other breweries over the web.
It's the result of a joint project between Brooklin Schneider and Jordan Ramey, two instructors at the school. The effort won them the 2014 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award, granted by the Alberta Colleges Institutes Faculties Association (ACIFA).
The prize is awarded for research into teaching methods and the winners were notified on Jan. 30. Schneider and Ramey will present their findings at a conference in Jasper, Alta., held the last weekend of May.
Schneider and Ramey will also split a $1,000 grant. The sum is meant to recoup costs but since their research did not incur any, they plan to donate the money to the Brewmaster program. With it, they hope to create revenue-earning tools that would subsidize extra-curricular activities, such as field trips for students, Ramey said.
In this project, Ramey taught the technical skills of beer making and Schneider handled the Brewmaster program's communications course. The pair joined forces because they wanted students to apply their learning practically, he said.
Schneider said bringing social media into the curriculum has caught the attention of the brewing industry and put students' work on display for people besides teachers and peers.
ìEverybody was really curious to see what this new program and brewery was about and people were really keen to hear about the students' experiences,î she said.
Schneider said the merits of collaborating with Ramey were clear.
ìSo we got thrown together as part of a team to work with them and we like beer and the students were nice, it seemed like a logical fit,î she said.
However, it was the students who benefited the most.
Each student pursues a work-study placement with a brewery during the summer and the majority will be successful.
ìI would say 90 per cent at least will be working in functional breweries this summer,î Ramey said.
He credits social media as a tool for connecting students with breweries, by alerting them that they were qualified and available.
While Ramey admits that the success rate for finding summer work would likely be just as high otherwise, he says using these web tools made job-hunting easier.
ìI think they would have to work a lot harder to make these connections though,î he said. ìWhere otherwise, they would have to sit down, go to websites, find contact information, cold call people.î
His colleague calls Twitter a ìbig constant networking opportunity.î Schneider said students have followed trends in the brewing industry and practised e-marketing, skills that will follow them outside the classroom.
ìNow they're continuing to blog and continuing with Twitter because they've found it to be such a useful tool.î
